Don't just think about book knowledge. Do you love learning about different cultures by visiting them personally? Do you love learning more about the workings of a car to discover how to best improve it? Do you love to learn about your garden, to discover how to best protect it?
I love to learn. I don't ever want to stop.
In my Family Relations class, the teacher cited a Ken Bain quote, "Deepest learning occurs when students have questions that are important, intriguing, or just plain beautiful” (What the Best College Teachers Do).
Do I ask the right questions? Do I write questions that express my desire to learn?
Interestingly enough, in my Advanced Writing and Critical Thinking class, we covered this same idea. This particular teacher told the following story (with my own paraphrasing):
There was once a wise man. One day, a young man walked up to him. "Can you teach me everything you know?" said the boy.
The man gestured for the boy to follow, so he did.
The man walked into the ocean. The boy followed.
The man kept walking deeper and deeper. The boy kept following.
Eventually, the water reached up to the boy's chin. The boy asked, "When will you teach me everything you know?"
The wise man turned to the boy, grabbed his head, and held him under water.
The boy was shocked. His life was passing by his eyes. He thought he was going to die.
Just as the boy was about to discover death, the wise man pulled his head from the water and said, "When you want to know as much as you want to breathe, then I can teach you."
Do you want to know as much as you want breath or food? Do you starve for knowledge? It's only then that real wisdom can come. It's when you not only taste the knowledge, not only choke it down your throat, but rather consume and use the information that you really begin to know.
Francis Bacon wrote of this idea in an essay:
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention” (“Of Studies).
It takes work to really begin to learn. Sitting back and waiting for inspiration to hit is like sitting at the dinner table with your meal before you but only staring at it expecting it to be filling.
Often I believe expect that exact thing. I expect that attending school, appearing my in classes should be enough to give me knowledge for life. I frequently don’t have the inclination to complete my homework and actually work to learn.
So says Mortimer J. Adler: “. . . A great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable. . . . You have to reach for [the ideas]” (“How to Mark a Book”).
Above, I have the chart I mapped in my journal of the class discussion in the Advanced Writing and Critical Thinking class. It's similar to the one drawn on the board, but slightly different in how I chose to present the information.
To learn, you must have an active soul.
Active: Engaged in action; characterized by energetic work, participation, etc.; busy (Dictionary.com).
Soul. “And the spirit and the body are the soul of man” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15).
Thus, an active soul is when both the spirit and the body are engaged in action; characterized by energetic work, participation, etc.
“The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege if here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive” writes Ralph Waldo Emerson in “The American Scholar”.
Having an active soul means that not only is information memorized and pondered about, but rather it is applied. When applied, you learn. When truly learned, you progress.
Do you ask the important, intriguing and beautiful questions in class? Do you take advantage of the time? Or do you only sit back and memorize the facts that will appear in the tests?
I write my class notes in my journal, because it requires me to write the notes in relevance to myself. It's not just word for word what the teacher shares, but rather it's the information in relation to me and my life. Else I wouldn't put it into my journals. If it's tedious information that I know will be on the test, then I make it apply to me so I can write it down and remember and recall it.
Applying the information to your life is a lesson college tries to teach you.
A question stated in Family Relations was "This is my experience, so what should I choose to do?"
This semester I will be attempting to better study for my classes, taking advantage of the hours in a desk to ask the questions and mention the comments that will lead the lesson on to what I really want to know. Then I'll do my best to figure out how to apply it in my life and share it with others, hoping they will take something from my own insights.
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